Italian city in Tuscany. Siena has a long tradition of music-making associated with civic events (see fig.1), a tradition kept alive in the singing of popular songs for the Palio, the annual horse race. Historically, more formal musical activities centred on the cathedral and the Palazzo Pubblico, the principal seats of church and state.
Cathedral documents record the presence of a cantor and a master of the school by the 11th century. Services were celebrated by a plainchant choir, which grew in size from about 20 members (including canons, chaplains and clerks) in the mid-14th century to about 50 by the end of the 16th. Cathedral chant books notated in Beneventan neumes (now at I-Sc) survive from the 12th and 13th centuries, but the most celebrated volumes are the 13 graduals and 16 antiphoners from the period 1450–80, in the Libreria Piccolomini, which have illuminations by Liberale da Verona, Sano di Pietro and others. Two of these, manuscript 27.11 (olim 15) and manuscript 11.M (olim 25), contain a complete rhymed Office and a Mass Proper for the feast of the city's patron, St Ansanus.
Musical practices at the cathedral were first described by the canon Oderigo in his Ordo officiorum of 1215. In addition to providing a detailed account of the prayers and chants used in daily offices and masses, he furnished information regarding improvised performances of organum sung by two to four soloists and on occasion by the entire choir, and made it clear that the practices were neither new nor unusual. How long they endured is difficult to determine, but during the late 14th century and the early 15th it became the practice to hire two singers of polyphony. The employment of an ensemble of three or four adult singers in the 1440s mirrors trends evident at other cathedrals, such as Florence and Milan, during the same period. The adults were joined by cathedral school students, whose presence proved indispensable in the later 15th century. From the 1440s onwards, Siena served as a way-station for many of the Franco-Flemish singers recorded at larger and more active centres, such as Rome, Florence, Milan and Ferrara. Though most singers stayed briefly, their presence in Siena points to its importance in terms of contemporary performance practices and the transmission of repertory. Notable in this regard is the manuscript K.I.2, parts of which were apparently copied, probably in 1481, by the former papal singer Matheus Gay and subsequently rebound with fragments of other manuscripts; the repertory includes motets, psalms, Magnificat settings and masses by Martini, Obrecht, Agricola and Isaac.
Early in the 16th century the cathedral hired its first maestro di cappella, Eustachius de Monte Regali, a northerner who later served at the Vatican and Modena Cathedral. His successors included a number of Sienese musicians, among them Ansano Senese and Giovanni di Maestro Antonio (who also built the organ in the Palazzo Pubblico). The chapel felt the effects of the mid-century war and siege, and rebuilding was slow but steady under the leadership of Ascanio Marri and two north Italian Servites, Arcangelo da Reggio and Salvatore Essenga (the latter brought his student Orazio Vecchi to sing in the choir in the mid-1570s). But it was under Andrea Feliciani (maestro di cappella 1575–97) that the ensemble, with as many as 20 singers, an organist and trombonist, became a renowned Sienese institution. The repertory included the latest works by Palestrina and Victoria, as well as pieces composed expressly for Siena by Feliciani and his brilliant successor Francesco Bianciardi (maestro 1597–1607).
The chapel maintained a core of 12 to 15 singers throughout the 17th century and flourished under the direction of mostly Sienese musicians, including Marcantonio Tornioli, Annibale Gregori, Orindio Bartolini, Agostino Agazzari, Cristoforo Piochi and Giuseppe Fabbrini. In the second decade of the century, Gregori successfully enlarged the old-fashioned repertory by purchasing newer large- and small-scale concerted works by composers such as Belli, Vernizzi, Monteverdi, Tornioli and Agazzari (much of whose sacred music was designed with the cathedral organization in mind). A theorbo player and a cittern player performed sporadically with the choir in the first half of the century, complementing the ever-present trombonist; violinists were added to the payroll after 1650.
The presence of musicians at Siena's seat of government, the Palazzo Pubblico, is documented from as early as 1249, although it was not until a few decades later that the town trumpeters and heralds were officially recognized. From that time until the fall of the Republic, the trumpeters' corps was a cohesive force of some ten musicians who performed fanfares and other pieces learnt by rote. Their duties included playing at official functions, within and outside the Palazzo, and at daily and yearly public concerts. In the later 16th century, the trumpeters' corps was eclipsed in importance by the wind band, founded in 1408. Among the notable players were Niccolò Piffero (whose frottolas were published by Sambonetto), Marri, Tiberio Rivolti and, in the 17th century, Alberto and Annibale Gregori. The repertory of the group in the mid-1650s included Vecchi's L'Amfiparnaso, madrigals and motets by Marenzio, Gagliano, Leoni, Vernizzi and Agazzari, and diverse eight-part ‘sinfonie’.
Notable among other institutions where music flourished was the hospital church of S Maria della Scala, at which an ensemble can be documented from the early 1580s until 1612. The chapel was formed to display the talents of orphans apprenticed in the art of music. A musical organization was also established at S Maria di Provenzano shortly after its dedication in 1611; among its first maestri were Agazzari and Gregori. The Advent Novena was celebrated with special musical services there. Many of the city's other churches, such as S Domenico and S Agostino, employed organists on a regular basis. Ugurgieri Azzolini's praise of singers and instrumentalists at Ognissanti, S Niccolò and S Sebastiano confirms that several convents had active musical traditions. In addition to performing at services, the nuns staged spiritual comedies with musical interludes; a score survives for a sacred opera performed at S Girolamo in Campansi in 1686.
Also prominent in the city's musical life were the lay companies of laudesi, among the earliest in Italy. Lauda singing is recorded at S Domenico in 1273; by 1288 the monastery had opened a school for training young singers. Professional singers of laude were also associated with the cathedral and the hospital church in the 14th and 15th centuries. The continuing musical activities of lay companies throughout the next centuries are documented by a 1596 inventory from S Giovanni Battista in Pantaneto, which mentions at least ten manuscripts of plainchant, falsobordone and polyphony, and by Tomaso Pecci's Holy Week responsories, composed for the company of S Caterina in Fontebranda.
Works in various sources attest to the practice of secular music in Siena in the 14th century, though the history of Sienese secular music may be said to begin with the publication of Sambonetto’s Canzone sonetti strambotti et frottole libro primo (RISM 15152). Publications of madrigals by Marri and Feliciani, and the volume Il quinto libro delle Muse (157512) with works by Essenga, Feliciani and Marri, as well as Vecchi, Porta and Striggio, provide insight into the music performed in the city during that time. In the early 17th century, Siena could boast the composers Pecci and Claudio Saracini, widely admired for their seconda pratica madrigals and monodies respectively. Visits of the ruling Medici family to the city were often occasions for specially composed secular music, such as the canzonettas and arias Marri wrote for the pastoral cantata performed on the visit of Francesco de' Medici and his wife Bianca Capello in 1583, and the solos and choruses Gregori provided for the pastoral opera L'Imeneo d'Amore e di Siche, performed for a 1629 wedding where the bride was a lady-in-waiting to Duchess Catherine Gonzaga, then governor of Siena (the music for both now lost). Matthias de’ Medici, during his reign as governor of Siena, was the moving force behind an operatic production of 1647.
Academies played a large role in the musical life of the city. Members of the Filomeli staged an annual feast in honour of St Cecilia at which they performed intermedi. Members of the Congrega dei Rozzi (established in 1531) staged commedie and plays with intermedi. They obtained their own theatre for such productions from Grand Duke Cosimo III in 1690; the Teatro dei Rozzi, rebuilt in 1836, still stands. Vecchi's Le veglie di Siena was based on the games of ‘imitation’ that enlivened meetings of the Accademia degli Intronati (established in 1525), whose members included Bianciardi, Tornioli and Agazzari. The Intronati and the Accademia dei Filomati united in 1654 as the Accademia dei Rinnovati, which in 1669 mounted its first operatic production (Cesti’s L'Argia) in what is now called the Teatro dei Rinnovati in the Palazzo Pubblico (fig.2). The theatre (for a time called the Teatro Grande) burnt down in 1742 and 1751, and was rebuilt the second time by Antonio Galli-Bibiena; it later fell into disrepair but was restored in 1950.
Little is known of Siena’s cultural life in the 18th and 19th centuries, except that it was the birthplace of the castrato Francesco Bernardi, known as Senesino, and of the soprano Marietta Piccolomini. In 1932 Guido Chigi Saracini, a talented amateur musician and scion of a family with a conspicuous patrimony, brought Siena back to worldwide prominence with the creation of the Accademia Musicale Chigiana, a summer institute attracting students to the city for master classes with performers of international renown. The institute's activities annually culminate in a series of performances, the Settimane Musicali Senesi. The Accademia Chigiana also promotes research and study. Its publications include the Quaderni dell'Accademia Chigiana and since 1964 an annual collection of musicological studies, Chigiana.
I. Ugurgieri Azzolini: Le pompe sanesi, o vero Relazione delli huomini, e donne illustri di Siena, e suo stato, ii (Pistoia, 1649)
R. Morrocchi: La musica in Siena (Siena, 1886/R)
L. Cellesi: Storia della più antica banda musicale senese (Siena, 1906)
F. Jacometti: L'Accademia degli Intronati (Siena 1942)
S.A. Luciani: La musica in Siena (Siena, 1942)
F. Ghisi: ‘Italian Ars-Nova Music’, JRBM, i (1946–7), 173–91
C. Corso: ‘Araldi e canterini nella repubblica senese del Quattrocento’, Bullettino senese di storia patria, lxii (1955), 140–60
A. Vannini: L'Accademia musicale chigiana (Siena, 1957)
J. Haar: ‘On Musical Games in the 16th Century’, JAMS, xv (1962), 22–34
F.A. Gallo: ‘Alcune fonti poco note di musica teorica e pratica’, L'Ars Nova italiana del Trecento: convegni di studio 1961–1967, ed. F.A. Gallo (Certaldo, 1968), 49–76
A. Ziino: ‘Testi religiosi medioevali in notazione mensurale’, La musica al tempo del Boccaccio e i suoi rapporti con la letteratura: Siena and Certaldo 1975 [L'Ars Nova italiana del Trecento, iv (Certaldo, 1978)], 447–91
L. Pinzauti: L'Academia musicale chigiana da Boito a Boulez (Milan, 1982)
C. Terni ‘Aspetti musicologici dei corali Piccolomini’, I corali del duomo di Siena (Milan, 1982), 23–8
L'organo di Giovanni Piffero, 1519, del Palazzo Pubbico di Siena: relazione di restauro, saggi, rilievi: estratto pubblicato in occasione della tavola rotonda tenuta il 25 febbraio 1983 (Siena, 1983)
F.A. D'Accone: ‘A late 15th-Century Sienese Sacred Repertory: MS K.I.2 of the Biblioteca comunale, Siena’, MD, xxxvii (1983), 121–70
P.G. Laki: ‘Claudio Saracini: Innovative or Incompetent?’, IMSCR XIV: Bologna 1987, iii, 905–13
F.A. D'Accone: ‘Instrumental Resonances in a Sienese Vocal Print of 1515’, Le concert des voix et des instruments à la Renaissance: Tours 1991, 333–59
F.A. D'Accone: ‘La musica a Siena nel Trecento, Quattrocento e Cinquecento’, Umanesimo a Siena: Siena 1991, 455–80
L.A. Buch: Seconda prattica and the Aesthetic of Meraviglia: the Canzonettas and Madrigals of Tomaso Pecci (1576–1640) (diss., U. of Rochester, 1993)
C. Reardon: Agostino Agazzari and Music at Siena Cathedral, 1957–1641 (Oxford, 1993)
C. Reardon: ‘Music and Musicians at Santa Maria di Provenzano, Siena, 1595–1640’, JM, xi (1993), 106–32
C. Reardon: ‘Insegniar la zolfa ai gittatelli: Music and Teaching at Santa Maria della Scala, Siena, during the Late 16th and Early 17th Centuries’, Musica franca: Essays in Honor of Frank A. D'Accone, ed. I. Alm, A. McLamore and C. Reardon (Stuyvesant, NY, 1996), 119–38
F.A. D'Accone: The Civic Muse: Music and Musicians in Siena during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Chicago, 1997)
C. Reardon: Holy Concord within Sacred Walls: Nuns and Music in Siena, 1575–1700 (Oxford, forthcoming)
COLLEEN REARDON